Arcanum Unbounded

I plan to speak completely freely of the books I’ve read before I read the short stories so this means that if you want to stay spoiler free, look only at the stories you have already read and the books that surround it. I recommend not reading any of this but I can’t stop you even if I wanted to.

Anyway I intend to increase detail on this post after I read each story. Sometimes I’ll first read the books sometimes I’ll read all stories after eachother but it’s my blog so I’m going to do what I want.

The Selish System

The Emperor’s Soul

UNREAD

The Hope of Elantris

UNREAD

The Scandrian System

The Eleventh Metal

Gemmel

It is kind of cool to see what Kelsier was like before Mistborn: The Final Empire he was kind of depressed after he escaped the Pits of Hathsin. Also it is incredible how much Ruin planned, he got a spike in Gemmel somehow and was using Gemmel to train and guide Kelsier the right direction. Kelsier’s entire plan and eventual success for his revolution was entirely planned out by Ruin. It is eventually confirmed in Secret History that this was all Ruin’s plan. Other than that it is not that interesting a story. Mostly Kelsier finding his spark of freeing all the skaa which is crucially important of course.

Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania

Jak

This was just a funny story about a gentlemen adventurer. It teaches us a bit about how the koloss now live in this completely different world. Apparently like tribes, keeping mostly to their own but they don’t seem entirely hostile. I liked the annotations of Handerwyn who just adds something extra to the story that is unmissable. Overall a neat story that is interesting to learn about so that we now know some more things about koloss as they haven’t appeared at all except one koloss-blooded in The Alloy of Law.

Mistborn: Secret History

Kelsier

Now this is the good stuff. We learn so much in this relatively long short story. First of all, when people die they briefly pass the Spiritual plane before going to the Beyond, some sort of afterlife. Second, Preservation was already damaged greatly due to Ruin at the time of Kelsier’s death. And apparently a spirit can touch the power of Preservation at the Well of Ascension to keep their spirit in the Spiritual plane for a while. Here Kelsier learns about Ruin and its plans by doing… something with the Well and seeing Ruin himself and his influences.

Then we have the Drifter which is, according to online sources is Hoid. I don’t know who Hoid is or what he is or how he managed to stay alive for 300 years to help Wayne. Who and what and how the fuck is Hoid?!? We’ll figure that out later I suppose. After that Kelsier explores the Spritual Plane some after Vin releases Ruin. He meets some people from another world and then some people that seem to live on the Spiritual Plane. He cons them out of a device that lets someone take a shard after it has been shattered. He uses this to take Preservation’s power after he dies to stop Ruin a little. He uses this power to stop Spook from killing the Citizen of Urteau and manages to ward off Ruin long enough for Vin to finally be able to absorb the power.

He then returns to being a spirit and sees Sazed take the two shards and reform the earth, Kelsier sees Vin and Elend passing on to the Beyond and then he has not much left to do. He tells Spook in a dream to create an earring from a spike so he can see Kelsier. Spook does so and then they somehow give Kelsier a physical body. It is a lot and there are more questions asked than answered. One thing that does give me joy is to finally figure out why Vin walked away from that certain square that one time. Apparently Kelsier screamed to her to not go, recognizing Hoid and not wanting her near him. Other than that it explains Shards a little bit more than just the information we have from The Lost Metal. I liked the story though and I’m absolutely hooked on the Cosmere. Irreversibly so, I fear.

The Taldian System

White Sand

UNREAD

The Threnodite System

Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

UNREAD

The Drominad System

Sixth of the Dusk

UNREAD

The Rosharan System

Edgedancer

UNREAD